Thursday, April 29, 2010

napping and gagging

Most of today was a regular day. Natalie played and I hung out with her. Naps were a bit off today, though. This started around 4am. I woke up hearing Natalie moving around and grunting / whining a bit through the monitor. I never got fully back to sleep because she didn't sleep soundly after that. I peeked in at her at some point because I though getting up to pee would help me get back to sleep, but I saw that she was on her tummy and that was what the problem was. I feel like I'm waiting for the other should to drop with Natalie. She is such a great baby that I expect at some point we are going to have to have trouble. Maybe she'll be a difficult teenager or something, but I keep feeling that something will happen before then, such as waking up in the middle of the night because she's rolling over. Now that we've had our full night of sleep back for like four months, I so don't want to go back those middle of the night wakings, since those are all me.

Anyway, she never cried for more than a split second. But, she did take a nap until 820 after her breakfast. So, I'm guessing she was still tired. I thought I would be exhausted and nap, too, but I didn't. This nap had us off for the rest of the day though. We skipped the 9 am nap, and she didn't sleep long at 1030 after her lunch. We went out and took care of two errands this afternoon because it was sunny and warmer. We first went to the post office and mailed packages of pictures that I gathered last week. I had gone through our storage and got rid of all my prints that are now on cd; I felt bad just tossing them, so I packaged them up to mail to people. This stop went smoothly as Natalie looked at all the people gathering in line behind us as the postman had to weigh and label six packages. On our way to Bullmoose, though, Natalie fell asleep. I didn't want to drag out the carriage frame for such a short errand only to have her probably wake up, so I just turned off the car and let her sleep. I have had an old crossword puzzle book of my father's in the car since I bought the car from my parents. Only the expert puzzles were left, so I worked on one for a bit. After I got probably as far as I could get, I then cleared out the old contacts in my phone (like the Movie Galleries that went out of business) and the old text messages. So, Natalie got a good half an hour nap at least and we continued on with our errand.

We have been selling items back to Bullmoose for a little bit now. We have weeded out the VHS tapes we don't want or have on DVD as well as old cds. Today, I brought in some VHS tapes from Mike's parents. We only got a dollar for them, but to date, we've maybe earned about $30 in store credit there. We were only there a few minutes, so we went over to the pet store and Natalie got to look at the animals. She doesn't seem to be too excited in the animals, but we go anyway when we're in the area. There were cute white mice, dwarf bunnies, and goldfish that she could see well. After the pet store, we head home for Natalie to eat. I love taking Natalie out of the car seat to go into a store or to the library. She gets so exited and happy. But she cries when you go back to put back in.

The other different thing about today was that our Healthy Families home visitor came. Usually, Natalie is an angel show off during these visits, but today, she wouldn't go down for a nap around 4, so she had been up for about 3 hours by time the time the visit started. Natalie still showed off her flipping over, her cute teeth, and her "running." But she was crankier than she has been in the past. And, we had our first feeding mishap. Last night we made squash and put some aside to give Natalie. Tonight, Mike tried to give her some. We aren't totally sure what went wrong. It might have been that it was too solid. It might have been that home made foods have a different taste than jarred. It might have been the concistancy was different. But, even though she has eaten Gerber squash, she totally gagged on our squash. It was scary and I was glad that Karen (the home visitor) and Mike were there. After that, I didn't want fear to make me over react, so we tried a little more, but she started crying. So, we tried the rest of the green beans we opened at lunch, and she cried for that, too! Poor, baby! So, there was no dinner tonight. I just hope she doesn't hold it against food in the future. We don't think she will though because she was still leaning forward for the spoon.

I almost forgot the other big occurrence about food today. Natalie tried oatmeal for the first time. the big drama about it though was that I saw right before giving it to her that there was wheat in it. As I wrote just the other day, I was very worried about giving her wheat. It all worked out just fine, and it is actually kind of funny that the squash gave her more of a problem and I wasn't worried at all about that. But, I am still angry that the wheat is even in there. Why put it in there? Why add to baby food a highly allergic ingredient? Especially, why add it to one of the first foods a baby tries when doctors say one food at a time? It just makes me so annoyed that Gerber has a package that totes all these great things about their food, but ignores trying one food at a time, and on top of that, adds soy and wheat (two of the top ten allergens) to oats, which is basically safe. I was also annoyed by how it was listed. It appears as: oat flour (contains wheat). It makes it look like oats naturally have wheat in them. This is why waitresses say things to me like: "Wheat is naturally in potatoes" and "I thought all ice cream has eggs." I thought we were making progress on clear food labeling, too. This printing of "wheat" wasn't in bold and wasn't listed as a warning at the bottom either, which you see on most food for adults.

Anyway, back to Karen's visit. After she left, I felt uneasy. It was partly the guilt from the food gagging, but after a while, I realized it was also what she said about discipline. I already knew that we shouldn't make a big deal about biting so that she doesn't repeat it because she gets a reaction. But she also mentioned hitting, hair pulling, and grabbing glasses (which both Mike and I wear). I felt bad about this for two reasons. The first was that I worry that we already have made doing these things part of playing with us and fun and that it will be hard to get her to stop. The second was that thinking about discipline makes me uneasy in general. As a teacher, this was one of my weaker areas. I am not looking forward to all the work of her toddler years when she doesn't understand why I need to tell her no. But, I will say, that I have been ready for biting during nursing. Its happened twice so far. Once about a week ago, and I said, no biting, and removed her without any issue. The second time was today. She only grazed me with her teeth, but it was because she was tired, so I just said, no biting and didn't make an issue out of it because she probably didn't even know she had done it. So, I guess if I can be ready for that, I can work on this, too.

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